People are always asking me how I got started writing this column. Well, okay, no one has ever asked me that. Despite that glaring oversight, I present for your reading pleasure the secret origin of Pushing the Envelope.

(If you don’t want to walk down memory lane, feel free to surf elsewhere. I think there’s some breaking news about J.Lo and Ben on People.com. And those zany dancing hamsters must still have a site. Go wild.)

Direct produced its first ever show daily at the Direct Marketing Association annual conference in 1995 in Dallas. I was assigned to cover a keynote by someone from Microsoft. I forget the topic, but what I do remember is that the session quickly degenerated into an infomercial for Microsoft.

I went back to the pressroom disgusted, and proceeded to rant about what a waste of time the session had been. “Wow, I’ve never heard you be so bitchy,” marveled Ray Schultz, Direct’s esteemed editorial director. “It’s funny. Could you do that in writing?”

Tired, loopy on cold medication and late for a dinner meeting, I said sure, why not, and wrote the very first Pushing the Envelope. The rest is direct marketing journalism history. (Read that last line with the sarcasm intended, ‘kay?)

I felt very nostalgic for those days on Thursday morning, as I sat in on a keynote at the DCI CRM Conference & Expo in Boston and heard yet another infomercial from Microsoft, this time on the company’s CRM suite of products.

At least this time, the speaker, Tracey Kinsey, didn’t hide the fact that he was presenting a big old product plug. His job title, director of CRM evangelism, almost screams the fact that this is what he’s employed to do.

For much of the session, he did try to keep things in a soft sell mode, but everyone in the room knew they were there to hear about how usable Microsoft’s solution was for marketers. If they didn’t, the touchy feely video the program ended with, depicting how Microsoft will guide us to a better world, surely got the point across.

And yes, even though it was an infomercial, I stayed through the whole thing. I was getting a little misty eyed, thinking about how I’d yet again have a chance to be bitchy in print. Ah, the memories.

(Pushing the Envelope appears in each issue of Direct magazine. To respond to the opinions in this column, e-mail [email protected])

People are always asking me how I got started writing this column. Well, okay, no one has ever asked me that. Despite that glaring oversight, I present for your reading pleasure the secret origin of Pushing the Envelope.

(If you don’t want to walk down memory lane, feel free to surf elsewhere. I think there’s some breaking news about J.Lo and Ben on People.com. And those zany dancing hamsters must still have a site. Go wild.)

Direct produced its first ever show daily at the Direct Marketing Association annual conference in 1995 in Dallas. I was assigned to cover a keynote by someone from Microsoft. I forget the topic, but what I do remember is that the session quickly degenerated into an infomercial for Microsoft.

I went back to the pressroom disgusted, and proceeded to rant about what a waste of time the session had been. “Wow, I’ve never heard you be so bitchy,” marveled Ray Schultz, Direct’s esteemed editorial director. “It’s funny. Could you do that in writing?”

Tired, loopy on cold medication and late for a dinner meeting, I said sure, why not, and wrote the very first Pushing the Envelope. The rest is direct marketing journalism history. (Read that last line with the sarcasm intended, ‘kay?)

I felt very nostalgic for those days on Thursday morning, as I sat in on a keynote at the DCI CRM Conference & Expo in Boston and heard yet another infomercial from Microsoft, this time on the company’s CRM suite of products.

At least this time, the speaker, Tracey Kinsey, didn’t hide the fact that he was presenting a big old product plug. His job title, director of CRM evangelism, almost screams the fact that this is what he’s employed to do.

For much of the session, he did try to keep things in a soft sell mode, but everyone in the room knew they were there to hear about how usable Microsoft’s solution was for marketers. If they didn’t, the touchy feely video the program ended with, depicting how Microsoft will guide us to a better world, surely got the point across.

And yes, even though it was an infomercial, I stayed through the whole thing. I was getting a little misty eyed, thinking about how I’d yet again have a chance to be bitchy in print. Ah, the memories.

(Pushing the Envelope appears in each issue of Direct magazine. To respond to the opinions in this column, e-mail [email protected])